The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The movie adaptation of the book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is similar to
its paper counterpart but quite different at the same time. For one to understand a
critique of the movie, one must first understand the characters and the stories
behind the character. The director, Niels Arden Oplev, is successful in converting
Stieg Larsson’s story onto the big screen and thus does a sufficient job in filling
in the audience without taking up too much screen space.

A reoccurring theme that
can be found throughout Stieg Larsson’s writings is violence against women. The
original title to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was actually Men Who Hate Women, a
title for a film that is reflective of the author’s personal thoughts, but was too
racy for a big screen movie title. This brings us to another racy subject, the main
character of the movie, Lisbeth Salander (played by Noomi Rapace). Salander is
anything but a pushover in this movie, a girl who has an uncanny ability to hack
computers while donning dark black leather garb that is reminiscent of the character
Trinity of the Matrix. Her character must be approached in a delicate manner as it
takes a lot to peel the many layers of Lisbeth Salander. Her history adds to her
stereotypically unpleasant personality for a young woman, a personality that is
aggressive and definitely not pg-13.

Salander is paired up in the movie with Mikael
Blomkvist (played by Michael Nyqvist), a shunned journalist banned from the world of
journalism from writing one exposé too many. Their tale of connection begins by
getting raped by her probation officer, leading to her revolting back by essentially
raping him, leading him to give her control of her money, in which she buys a laptop
that she uses to hack into Blomkvist’s computer. Ironically, this act of deceit
actually brings the two even closer and eventually inspires him to adopt her as an
investigative partner. The story begins when the shunned journalist is hired by the
head of Vanger Enterprises, Henrik Vanger, to solve the forty-year old mystery of
his missing niece. The story of his missing niece ties into a whole web of lies and
mysteries that all seem to intertwine in some initially trivial way that sucks the
detective duo in to solve the mystery.

The movie itself is one of great length. The
running time for this film is officially capped off at a hundred and forty eight
minutes, but feels like a four-hour movie. Although the film itself can be
interesting to some, a few may find it difficult to sit through a gloomy film of
this sort for over two hours at a time.